Brit Asia Awards: Success or Disaster?

As you all probably know the Brit Asia Music Awards for this year took place last night at the NIA Birmingham, England.Your idea of a music awards ceremony must be red carpet, Tuxedos, glamour and a civilised event; unfortunately that’s not how it all turned out to be.

Fights broke out, people heard swear words from an artist and some girls were treated rudely by young guys.On the plus side people did seem to enjoy the performances of some of great artists including Gippy Grewal who performed for the first time in the UK.How successful was the event I will let you conclude.

Let’s start off with the awards bit. The best newcomer award went to San2 who just recently released Nayo Lagda which was quite successful as it was something different to what we normally see.I think the main competitor for San2 was Raj Bains, a new folk singer whose fans were rather disappointed.However, Raj did seem to get the biggest cheer according to PBN who he is assigned to.

The Best International Act award went to Diljit Dosanjh.Garry Sandhu, Yuvraj Singh, Sartaaj and surprisingly Gurdas Mann were competing for this award!As far as I know Gurdas Mann is considered one the best role models for many artists and also an influential figure in the world of Punjabi music yet he did not win this award? Diljit also managed to bag The Best Bhangra single award for Kharku and best album namely Back to Basics.One other album nominated was Maestro by AS Kang which didn’t seemed to get recognised at this event although it had a great feedback at the time of release.

On the other hand, we saw a huge disappointment from fans of Nafees who was also nominated for Best Male Act and Best Bhangra Single (Bukhaar).Quite interestingly some people on twitter made comments such as “if you are a Pakistani artist you don’t get much recognition from Brit Asia TV.”Do you think being a Pakistani or Indian makes a difference? Let’s not forget Roach Killa and Imran Khan are also of Pakistani origin and both received awards for Best Urban Asian Act and Best Urban Asian Single (Satisfya) respectively.

The Best Male Act went to Jaz Dhami.This was quite a tough one as popular artists such as Nafees, Imran Khan, Jay Status and Jazzy B were amongst the nominees. The question that begs here is what makes an artist the Best Male Act? Is it the dress sense, the personality, the songs, the voice, the music or everything? Do you agree Jaz Dhami is the Best Male in this industry or could this have gone to someone else?

One of the most controversial award titles being awarded was for The Best Asian Music Producer.This award went to Tru Skool who produced music for Putt Jattan De and Kharku as well as for many other tracks from the album Back to Basic by Diljit Dosanjh.Two notable music producers namely Dr Zeus and DJ Sanj were also nominated for this title and it was quite a shock to some that neither of the other two won this award.

Does receiving an award from Brit Asia really make that person, song or album the best?Is an award a true representation of the hard work an artist puts in a project?

Awards aside, there seemed to have been lots of disappointments with the organisation and running of the event.According to sources a lady complained she had never had to tell off guys who were being disrespectful and sleazy! This was surely not a family event.

The most dramatic thing which almost everyone heard was a fight kicking off between Jaz Dhami’s drunken crew with chairs being thrown around!You do not see such things in Bollywood or Hollywood award ceremonies.Where did professionalism go?Could this event have still not been wonderful without any alcohol being consumed?

The organiser claimed this event “represents a lifestyle, which encompasses the very soul of Asian Youth Culture in the UK.” However, being disrespectful to women, getting drunk and kicking off fights certainly does not represent many of us.The organiser, Brit Asia TV seemed to have gained lots of negative and positive comments.

Some people claimed the awards do not mean anything as they have been fixed while others thanked Brit Asia TV for brining great performers.Economically it would have been beneficial for the organiser as £1 was charged just to receive a single vote via a text message which deterred a number of people from voting.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the votes were rigged? Is there anyone you think deserved an award but didn’t get it last night? Could this event have been better planned and fairer?